


The Bargain

by litra



Series: magical marvel [3]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Magic, names have power
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-05
Updated: 2019-02-05
Packaged: 2019-10-22 17:52:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17667296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/litra/pseuds/litra
Summary: Howard Stark had made a deal for his skill. He bargained with the fair folk, the crossroads trader, the crooked men. He knew from the start that he would burn brightly and die young.Tony didn't know about his father's deal.





	The Bargain

Howard Stark had made a deal for his skill. He bargained with the fair folk, the crossroads trader, the crooked men. He knew from the start that he would burn brightly and die young.

  
Tony didn't know about his father's deal.

  
Howard had been smart but he hadn't been world-shattering. He hadn't had the resources to make a name for himself in a time when the world was still broken from the first great war.

  
Tony was smart. Smarter than his father had been at his age - before the deal. He had the world at his fingertips, all the resources money could buy.  
Howard's deal took his life, and the life of Maria in the bargain. Tony only knew that his parents were gone, the secret taken to the grave with them.  
Tony grew to adulthood without knowledge of the magic in the world... at least until his own weapons were turned against him and he woke up beneath a mountain.

  
Yinsen said he was a doctor. Tony didn't believe him. He didn't have the equipment for one, and when Tony peeled back the gause to take a look for himself the wounds weren't deep, or widespread enough for what he claimed had happened.

  
If the shrapnel was in his blood it didn't matter where it entered, it would have already gotten to his heart, or killed him with internal bleeding. He should have been is so much pain he couldn't see or too loopy to think straight if they had given him enough painkillers to deal with the problem. Instead he had a clear head and only a moderate amount of pain. He didn't have any heavy metal poisoning. 

  
Now Tony was the first to admit he wasn't a doctor. He might have gone along with it, if he hadn't known it was a Stark weapon that had been used against him. He wasn't a doctor, but he knew those machines inside and out. They were made from aluminum, stainless steel, copper wiring and some plastic thrown in for good measure; All non-ferrous metals. Even if everything Yinsen said was the truth, the car battery shouldn't have been doing squat to stop it.

Tony shook the hand of a terrorist and smiled as he denied the deal offered.

"That was very clever." Yinsen said, and "This is a very important week for you."

Yinsen was watching him, and Tony was watching Yinsen right back. Nothing added up. the one week deadline didn't make any more sense then the rest of it.

"Cut the crap." Tony said when he was sure the guard was out of earshot. "What is this? Some kind of psychology? Good cop, bad cop? Are you their inside man? Because I've got to say, as crazy as this whole situation is, you still managed to overplay your hand."

Yinsen rolled a bit of copper sire between his fingers, twisting it into a circle, over and around and back again.

"Ah, asking questions is a good start, but still not the right questions."

Tony tossed aside his socket wrench and stood with his feet braced, "And what questions should I be asking?"

"Perhaps start with where you are?"

"I know I'm still in Afghanistan. Somehow I think my wonderful host would decline to be more specific." Tony said with an eye roll.

"The men out there? yes, you're probably right. But they are not your true hosts. They are invaders in this place, as much as your American military."

Tony narrowed his eyes. There was a cadence to Yinsen's speech that caught his ear. Howard hadn't been all that attentive, but there were certain things he'd made sure his son knew and traditional manners were one of them. Tony hadn't willingly taken any food or drink, not yet. That was one of the old rules. He hadn't attacked anyone, mostly because there was a battery strapped to his chest and he was hugely outnumbered but the point stood. That was another of the old rules...

"Am I a guest in this house or a prisoner?" Tony asked on a hunch. If the men outside his cell had anything to say about it he was a prisoner, and a prisoner had certain rights. It was perfectly fine for a prisoner to try to escape for instance. A guest had to help defend his host and his host's people...

The man before him smiled. "Anthony Edward Stark, called Tony, As the last of my kin still living I invite you in as guest to my home underhill." Yinsen spread his arms wide and bowed slightly. As he watched Yinsen's already short frame, shrank. his beard lengthened, his glasses changed, until they weren't glasses at all by sparkling eyes designed to see through the dark under the earth. Then just as smoothly Yinsen returned to the shape Tony had come to know.

Tony swallowed, stories flashing through his mind. stories Jarvis had told him when he was tiny, before he'd learned to scoff at the idea of Magic and thrown his heart into science.

"Right, right, okay. Yeah, thanks." Tony looked at the door, then down at his hands, up to the man called Yinsen and away again. God the implications. no one would believe him. He didn't want them to believe him. he wasn't sure he believed it himself. This could all be some fever dream. Still Tony Stark wasn't one to roll with the punches. 

"Okay, were they invited?" He finally asked, waving a hand towards the door.

"They were not." Yinsen said with a quirk to his lips that wasn't quite a smile, but wasn't really a grimace either. "If I but had the skill I would cast them out, alas I am alone."

"Well, there's me, but that's still not going to be enough, so how about we make a deal."

This time Yinsen's smile was wide and his eyes crinkled at the corners. "Yes, lets"

Manners wasn't the only thing Howard had made sure his son learned. Good negotiation skills were part of the package too. 

They spoke long into the night, though underhill it might have been a few minutes or a year and a day, the surroundings did not change. They shook hands and exchanged drinks to seal the bargain. Yinsen brought forth one of the earth's stars that science called palladium, and Tony worked it with new understanding, forging it into a heart that Yinsen placed in his chest. Then they began the true work.

Tony stepped forth in a suit of armor, freeing his friend's home from those who thought to concor it without even understanding what it was. He killed them. He burned them. He sent them fleeing into the empty sands. His friend stayed behind. That was the plan. That was always the plan. It still hurt.

Except it didn't stop there. Tony had been marked. The press called it PTSD. The board called it erratic. Pepper didn't call it anything, she just gave him that look that said she was worried and asked if that was all. Tony didn't know what to call it. Sight perhaps. Sight in the old meaning of the word, not quite insight, not quite knowledge, not quite literal seeing, but a little of all three. 

Pepper shone in his sight, a golden halo around her head and a song not quite heard that followed her wherever she went. When he held his press conference more then a few members of the audience had shimmering eyes and features that didn't sit quite right. He could see what they should have looked like and he could see the face under the mask and it made him a little nauseous if he concentrated too long. The ideas were still flowing through his mind, even though the deal was done, all debts paid... at least he'd thought they were.  

His heart still glowed.

His heart glowed all the brighter when he had Pepper replace the core. It wasn't from Yinsen's mountain, but it was still tied to the soul of the earth, the first mother, the periodic table. Pepper gifted it to him twice over, and Tony went to work.

He build things, forged things, cast his will into the world and it didn't matter if it was magic or science that answered, not if the results could be measured, estimated, predicted, tracked and turned to his advantage. He set out to write his wrongs, and the wrongs of his father too, even if he didn't know it. He was fixing things. fixing the middle east, fixing the whole damn world. fixing the icing problem. It was actually working. A debt paid twice over.

Then Obi showed his real face. It wasn't like the reporters or Pepper or any of the other things that he had glimpsed since his return. The things Tony was starting to recognise as not human. Obi was human, he knew that much. He still managed to steal the light from his heart. Tony should have died there, killed by his bargain after all...

...But he still had work to do...

Tony asked a lot of Pepper, he knew that. He'd asked a lot of her in the past and he was asking even more now. He asked her to lie, to walk into danger, to do a job that should be his... To press a button.

He managed to survive somehow. They both managed to survive.

Coulson was something else. Not quite human but not quite anything else. He gave Tony a set of cards. Tony knew an out when he saw one. The gesture said, "You don't have to," and "This doesn't have to be your path, your burdin." Tony looked down at a woman who asked for truth. A woman who didn't need magic to know exactly what to say. He thought of Yinsen, and tasks left undone. He thought of Pepper and the work she had taken up even when she hadn't needed to. When no one asked her to.

Names were important. That was another thing his father had told him. That was one of the many reasons he'd started going by Tony. It was a name he chose, and a shield against his real name, his real heart. Yinsen had reminded him in those dark halls under the hill. Yinsen had spoken his full name, not his true name, but close enough.

Tony knew what he was doing when he said "I am Iron Man."


End file.
